Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Studies on birth order show that first-born children tend to have IQs that are, on average, 3 points higher than those of their second-born siblings, and second-borns in turn have a point or two advantage on their younger brothers and sisters. The most popular (and most PC) explanation for this is that couples are able to invest all of their parental energy into the first-born before the next child comes along. After that, though, parental attention is split among multiple offspring. But if the explanation is at least partially one of nature (or a product of a woman's reproductive quality declining as the number of times she's given birth accumulates), might there be a causal relationship between declining birth rates and the Flynn effect (realizing that at most this would account for a 1-2 point increase in average IQ and thus constituting only a fraction of the observed effect)?

Saturday, November 27, 2010

++Addition++Steve Sailer makes some observations on the nation's top two whitopias, one quite red and the other very blue.

---

The following table ranks states by accretion in each state's white population exclusively due to internal migration within the US (thus excluding birth rates and foreign immigration) over a three-year period. "Growth" is measured in terms of the percentage of the population in each state that is white. So if a state has one million white residents and over the time period being measured 40,000 move out of state and 50,000 move in (for a net of 10,000 whites), the growth rate is 1.0% (10,000/1,000,000). Because internal migration is the only thing being measured, it's a zero-sum game--for every state that has growth, another has a corresponding contraction. The data, from Pew, are from 2005-2007, and so predate the recession:

State

% change

1. District of Columbia

5.1

2. Idaho

4.6

3. Arizona

4.5

4. South Carolina

3.5

5. North Carolina

2.8

6. Delaware

2.6

7. Oregon

2.2

8. Georgia

2.0

9. Arkansas

1.9

10. Oklahoma

1.7

10. Montana

1.7

10. Alabama

1.7

13. Texas

1.6

14. Washington

1.4

14. Tennessee

1.4

14. New Mexico

1.4

17. Kentucky

1.3

18. Colorado

1.2

19. Florida

0.9

20. Utah

0.7

20. New Hampshire

0.7

20. Nevada

0.7

23. Virginia

0.6

24. Missouri

0.4

25. West Virginia

0.3

25. Pennsylvania

0.3

25. Iowa

0.3

28. South Dakota

0.1

29. Wisconsin

0

29. Indiana

0

31. Nebraska

(0.2)

32. Vermont

(0.3)

33. Maine

(0.4)

34. Wyoming

(0.6)

34. Kansas

(0.6)

36. North Dakota

(0.7)

37. Ohio

(0.9)

38. Minnesota

(1.0)

39. Rhode Island

(1.1)

40. Illinois

(1.4)

40. Connecticut

(1.4)

42. Mississippi

(1.7)

42. Michigan

(1.7)

44. New Jersey

(2.0)

44. California

(2.0)

46. Massachusetts

(2.1)

47. Maryland

(2.2)

48. New York

(2.3)

49. Louisiana

(3.6)

50. Hawaii

(6.8)

51. Alaska

(7.3)

Generally, the South, the Mountain West, and the Pacific Northwest are where whites are moving to, hailing originally from the Midwest and Northeast, though there are exceptions. There is movement out of Mississippi and Louisiana, as well as mini-exodus from Hawaii and Alaska back into the contiguous US. Parenthetically, it should be noted that white internal migration patterns roughly parallel those of non-whites.

The nation's capital has undergone the most substantial demographic transition in the country over the last decade, as blacks have left en masse (DC lost a staggering one-fifth of its black population over the three year period), replaced by SWPLs who have heeded John Derbyshire's prudent advice that people should do their best to get government jobs.

With the first blast of this winter's frigidity upon those of us in the Midwest, allow me to dispense a bit of practical advice. When a patch of ice causes you to wipe out, most of the time you're going to be landing on your ass after one of your feet slips forward from underneath you. To prevent this when you're walking on a slick surface, lean further forward than you normally do when you walk, sort of like Sherlock Holmes does when he's scouring. You'll be less likely to fall, and if you do, you'll fall forward, which allows you to use your arms to break some of the impact.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

In a recent Econ Talk podcast, host Russ Roberts and then later Don Boudreaux both explain how trade deficits are not worrisome, that globally there must be a net balance in trade surpluses and deficits, and that anyway, giving away paper to get stuff doesn't seem like such a bad deal. Boudreaux's take is more sober, as he specifies that when the paper exchanged for goods goes bad (the currency loses value, the debt is defaulted on, the market value of the company for which the equity represents plummets, etc), things really work out well for the one running the deficit, whereas the assets exchanged appreciating rapidly in value is not so rosy for the country running the deficit. Roberts, in contrast, seems stuck on pieces of paper for stuff is a great deal!

My method for thinking about economic issues is surely risible in the eyes of professional economists who understand economics infinitely better than I do, but as a simpleton, I'm stuck with my method. That method is to analogize whatever is in question to myself at the individual level. Attempting to stimulate the economy through massive spending after people have lost trillions in wealth therefore strikes me as absurd, just as going on a shopping binge after losing my job would be.

Similarly, applying for and maxing out every credit card I can get my hands on seems like a disastrously profligate idea. But like the US running a trade deficit with China, if all I have to do is swipe these pieces of plastic--don't even have to give away paper!--in return for food to eat, stuff at Home Depot to improve my house, and all kinds of other things to play with, joke is on the fools who are giving up valuable stuff for nothing but the opportunity to hold my credit card for a few seconds! Doubly so when I am unable (or refuse) to pay what they say I owe and declare bankruptcy to get them off my back.

I'm sure there is a trade-deficits-don't-matter answer ready for deployment in response to this, but I never hear it from economists like Roberts or Boudreaux. They might respond that the flip side of a trade deficit is a capital surplus, but that works in the credit card analogy as well--whatever I'm buying (or at least many of the things I buy) are capital goods, obvious cases being the purchase of a car or materials to build a fence on my property. Thus I'm enjoying my own capital surplus while I run up my trade deficit.

So is going into credit card debt as long as banks will keep issuing you credit a good idea? Is running a net trade deficit year after year a similarly good idea? If the answer in the case of the former is "no" but in the latter is "yes", why? Simpletons want to know.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

The proceeding list shows the number of different women men in various occupations have been with in the course of their lives. To avoid skewing the numbers with youngsters just riding out into the morning sun, only those 35 and older at the time of participation in the GSS are considered. Each grouping (separated by semi-colons) has a minimum of 25 respondents, although most have numbers far higher than that and are grouped as they are for convenience or because that is how ISCO 88 categorizes them.

Occupations for which the median number of sexual partners in life is 10:

With the glaring exception of spiritual shepherds, who appear to largely adhere to the behavior proscribed by their religions and abstain from premarital sex or, in the case of Catholic priests, avoid it altogether, men who make their money by communicating with others are the most sexually prolific. Lust loves loquacity.

The idea that military life is one of leaving base each weekend to bang exotic girls is, at the least, oversold.

The core of respectable bourgeoisie careers--doctors, accountants, and network administrators--are on the lower end, in large part because these guys are among the most likely to be married.

One might think that being in an environment devoid of competition and flooded with women would be like shooting fish in a barrel, but male teachers (K-12) tend to have a modest number of notches in their belts. The desire to be responsible for herds of children (or even just the ability to tolerate so being) probably selects for a type of man who is not exactly bursting at the seams with testosterone.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Agnostic has a post up where he ridicules the taboo against spoilers as a sign of deterioration in entertainment, an increasing vapidity among those who take it in, or both. It strikes me as a sensible response to a changing media landscape, as I tried to flesh out in the comments, which are reprinted here:

I don't think the insinuation that wanting to have a conclusion withheld is fairly described as hysterical, nor is it a sign that the narrative is trash and/or that the viewer is trash.

I regularly record NFL games and watch them later in the day, not because football's sole appeal is what it reveals about the standings or because I'm incapable of appreciating anything other than who gets the win, but because it takes away from the overall experience. I'll still watch Briggs and Urlacher in Miami whether the Bears stay on top of the north or not. I'd prefer not know until the end of the game, though.

That you wouldn't structure your argument around a sports contest hints at a significant reason for the rise in spoiler-phobia over the last 15 years. Sports have always been spoiled immediately. The assumption is that you take it in in real-time, or you don't take it in at all and instead settle for highlights on SportsCenter. Episodes of TV series used to exist in the same way. Now, though, viewers of TV shows are not beholden to see something at the time it is slated to air--they are easily able to access it at their own convenience, by buying entire seasons on DVD, viewing them on youtube, etc (to a lesser extent this applies to sports as well).

In the past, after the show or event aired, if you missed it, it could be fairly assumed you would never see it (at least not anytime in the near future), so revealing the narrative wasn't nearly as big of a deal. It was as though if you didn't read the book within a specific time frame, all you had access to were the Cliff's Notes--no harm in reading them in such a situation. But if you are able to pick up the book at your own leisure, your aversion to the Cliff's Notes prior to reading the book yourself is understandable.

While the term "spoiler" may have been born in 1995, the disdain for it obviously predates that time. In the Simpsons episode "I Married Marge", aired in '91, a teenage Homer enrages a line of moviegoers when he expresses his surprise at the ending of The Empire Strikes Back to Marge. The difference then was that unless you went seeking a movie's conclusion, you wouldn't find it (absent some loud-mouthed jerk blabbing about it without solicitation). Fast-forward to the age of Google, blogs, and social networks and the chance of having something spoiled is everywhere and unpredictable. It can be difficult to escape from. Spoiler warnings have become a necessity because of technological change. That seems a sufficient explanation to me.

Regarding video games, I think you have it exactly backwards. The aversion to spoilers is a sign of how much more stimulating narratives have become and how video gaming has evolved to the point of realizing the same character depth, philosophical speculation, cultural and historical referencing, and moral instruction that movies do.

The revelation that Samus is a girl is the ideal illustration of a vapid 'shocker'. It has no bearing on anything else to the gameplayer. The tragic role reversals of Tidus and Yuna (Final Fantasy 10), in contrast, is richly teased out over 40 hours (another reason video games, and rpgs specifically, are so spoiler-adverse--when it comes to time and depth invested in a narrative, other forms of entertainment pale by comparison), building steadily but so subtly that at the story's conclusion it still leaves the gameplayer reeling. Tidus is initially an ego maniacal, vain sports star; Yuna a prophet-like, almost messianic young woman guided by the Fayth (angels) toward the ultimate (and presumably preordained) sacrifice as a means of joining Sin and removing it from the world.

As it turns out, it is Tidus who inevitably must be sacrificed. Tidus, of course, struggles mightily with this, but so does Yuna, not just because someone else must suffer what was thought to be her fate, but because she must come to terms with the realization that what she believed to be the culmination of her existence was an illusion, and that her new reality was entirely at odds with everything she'd lived for up to that point. There are enormous statements made about religion and its interaction with both society and the individual made in the game. That is just one of many remarkable elements of the narrative. Knowing as much in advance negatively alters the experience of the game far more than knowing Samus' sex does (although neither spoiler makes the games unplayable by any stretch--they survive on far more than their narratives).

Monday, November 15, 2010

The following table shows net support (% of voters supporting - % of voters opposing) for the tea party movement by state among voters in the 2010 mid-term elections. Exit polling was only conducted extensively in states where the Senate and/or gubernatorial races were at least somewhat competitive:

State

Support

Oppose

Net

1) Texas

48

25

23

2) Arkansas

43

23

20

3) Indiana

46

27

19

4) West Virginia

40

24

16

4) Ohio

43

27

16

4) Arizona

46

30

16

7) Kentucky

43

28

15

8) South Carolina

43

29

14

9) Missouri

41

28

13

9) Louisiana

42

29

13

National

41

30

11

11) New Hampshire

41

32

9

12) Colorado

41

34

7

12) Florida

39

32

7

14) Wisconsin

37

32

5

15) Illinois

36

32

4

15) Pennsylvania

39

35

4

15) Iowa

36

32

4

18) Nevada

38

35

3

19) Oregon

36

36

0

20) California

34

35

(1)

20) New York

36

37

(1)

22) Washington

37

40

(3)

23) Connecticut

35

42

(7)

24) Delaware

35

45

(10)

25) Hawaii

26

37

(11)

26) Vermont

24

43

(19)

Nothing surprising here. The correlation between McCain's share of the vote in '08 and support for the tea party today is a nearly perfect .89. The phenomenon is a battle for the 'heart and soul' of the Republican party--there are very few leftists joining the cause.

What is remarkable is how the perceptions of the tea party compare with those of the two major parties. The following table shows net support for the tea party and each major political party, this time by net support for Democrats. Because the questions regarding the parties asks about favorability/unfavorability while the tea party question asks about support/opposition, it's not quite an apples-to-apples comparison, but it's close. For whatever reason, exit pollsters in five states did not inquire about feelings towards the two parties, so those states are omitted:

State

Dem

Rep

TP

California

+6

(28)

(1)

Illinois

+6

(19)

+4

Delaware

+5

(20)

(10)

Washington

+4

(23)

(3)

Pennsylvania

(1)

(13)

+4

Oregon

(3)

(33)

+0

Wisconsin

(6)

(4)

+5

West Virginia

(7)

(4)

+16

National

(8)

(12)

+11

Colorado

(10)

(18)

+7

Florida

(11)

(8)

+7

Iowa

(11)

(2)

+4

Nevada

(11)

(12)

+3

Ohio

(11)

(12)

+16

Missouri

(15)

(5)

+13

Kentucky

(16)

+2

+15

Arkansas

(17)

+8

+20

Indiana

(18)

+5

+19

New Hampshire

(18)

(1)

+9

South Carolina

(19)

+9

+14

Texas

(19)

+5

+23

Arizona

(23)

+1

+16

In no state does the GOP receive greater support than the tea party. I've resigned myself to the idea that I will be voting without exception for hopeless third party presidential candidates for my entire life, but if ever the ground seems fertile enough for a perennial third party to take root, now is that time.

Even in some competitive blue states like Pennsylvania, Oregon, and Wisconsin, the tea party does better than Democrats do. Even in solidly Democratic states like California and Illinois, feelings towards the tea party are decidedly mixed. Christine O'Donnell, like Sarah Palin, appears to have a knack for really grating some people. Consequently, opposition to the tea party is especially high in Delaware relative to its political profile.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

In the recent interview conducted by Matt Lauer, former President George W. Bush says that Kanye West accusing him of not caring about black people was the worst moment of his entire presidency:

As soon as Lauer begins the question about the NBC telethon, Bush's expression changes in recognition of what is coming. While responding, Bush bangs the outside of his hands down on the table. His reaction is genuine and visceral, not coached. Kanye really got to him. I believe him when he claims that it was personally the worst moment he experienced in his eight years in office.

And it is as lamentable a statement as it sincere, not only because there are so many other things of far greater consequence that he is answerable for, like the war in Iraq, NCLB, the Patriot Act, the Medicare prescription drug plan, the housing collapse and ensuing recession, etc, but because it represents the utter futility of the right bending over backwards to cater to non-whites and avoid the "racist" label. He was a strong supporter of the McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill, gave more aid money to sub-Saharan Africa than any other President in US history, gave cabinet positions to four blacks (Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Rod Paige, Alphonso Jackson), three Hispanics (Alberto Gonzalez, Carlos Gutierrez, Mel Martinez), two Asians (Elaine Chao, Norman Mineta), and an Arab (Spencer Abraham), charged that the NYFD violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act in the disparate impact that resulted from its screening processes, pushed strongly for greater minority home ownership at the expense of financial prudence on the part of lenders, and on and on.

Despite this sustained effort to gain the approval of non-whites, and an apparently ingenuous desire to show that he is not a racist, Kanye's sentiments are shared by blacks everywhere. And not just blacks and other non-whites, but even among many white leftists. Googling "george bush racist" brings up over 2 million returns. Wealth redistribution, affirmative action, disparate impact, the putative inherent value of diversity, increased government services, and other ideas championed by the contemporary left are naturally more appealing to NAMs than they are to whites, as NAMs tend to be on the receiving end of the benefits bestowed by these things, while whites are largely the ones forced to foot the bill and make the sacrifices necessary for these benefits to be enjoyed.

Short of somehow trying to move to the left of the Democratic party, the GOP will never receive significant NAM support. It has never happened in modern history, and it never will (Asians are potentially another story; the GOP won the Asian vote as recently as 1996). Republicans like Bush need to stop ruining themselves and their party's future prospects genuflecting at the multicult altar. The high priests never grant those on the right atonement, only excommunication.

Sunday, November 07, 2010

++Addition++Patrick Cleburnenotes that I disagree with the idea that immigration is a winning issue for the GOP. That's a product of poor communication on my part, not my actual sentiments. I'm just speculating that going as far as Angle did may have been politically counterproductive. I suspect (and the exit polling data appears to support me) that people who are seriously concerned with immigration will seek out politicians' stances on it, so making it a campaign centerpiece is unnecessary and runs the risk of opening one up to all the usual point-and-sputter charges of racism, bigotry, hate, etc.

---

California's Proposition 19 was shot down at nearly identical rates by race. Like American Idol and Monday Night Football, the attempt to legalize marijuana use among those old enough to drink is something people of every color can appreciate, or in this case, object to:

Race

Yes

No

White (60%)

46%

54%

Black (10%)

47%

53%

Hispanic (22%)

45%

55%

Asian (4%)

39%

61%

Other (3%)

48%

52%

The partisan differences are far more distinct, however:

Party

Yes

No

Democrat

56%

44%

Republican

30%

70%

Independent

47%

53%

Without taking this into consideration, we'd miss the fact that non-white Democrats fell in between independent whites and Republican whites in their levels of opposition to Prop 19. Support only came from white Democrats which, even in solidly blue California, wasn't enough to get it passed. There's a take-home message or two here for SWPLs.

Arizona and Colorado each had propositions (actually an amendment to the state constitution in the case of the latter) on healthcare up for voter consideration that were similarly designed to challenge the Obama plan. As expected, in both states conservatives and Republicans were the most supportive of the propositions, liberals and Democrats the least so, with moderates and independents in between.

Far more remarkable (and in my opinion, encouraging) was how the age trend ran in the opposite direction it so consistently runs on other issues largely defined by party affiliation. Young people were most supportive of the propositions and, by extension, are the least supportive of Obamacare. In Arizona:

Age

Yes

No

18-29 (10%)

60%

40%

30-44 (21%)

55%

45%

45-64 (42%)

57%

43%

65+ (28%)

50%

50%

In Colorado, the 18-29 age range was too small to reliably report a breakdown for, but the trend is similar:

Age

Yes

No

18-29 (9%)

N/A

N/A

30-44 (22%)

48%

52%

45-64 (47%)

48%

52%

65+ (21%)

43%

57%

Young adults appear to understand that a socialized healthcare system is one in which they will be paying for benefits their elders will enjoy without getting anything in return. With the inversion of the age pyramid that is taking place across the Western world, the young are already going to be dealing with increasing demands on their resources from social security and other old age entitlements that are not tied directly to healthcare. They are understandably reluctant to take on the burdens Obamacare will inevitably place on them.

I wonder if supporters of the Arizona and Colorado propositions were aware of how the age element played into the results. This was the first general election in which such propositions directly challenging Obamacare could be put to the voting public, so waiting until 2012 would've meant passing up the earliest opportunity. But it also would've meant a higher percentage of the electorate would've been in the 18-29 year old range. In Arizona, it didn't matter--Prop 106 passed. In Colorado, however, amendment 63 narrowly went down to defeat.

Moving to the congressional elections, following President Obama's victory in the 2008 election, Half Sigma decried the GOP becoming a party of poor, dumb whites, citing Obama's victory among the highest income voters. Two years later, the clarion call is sounding a bit silly. One of the good (or convenient, anyway) things about stagnating per capita wealth in the US over the last decade is that like comparisons among voters by income range can be made across election cycles. The following table shows the percentage of voters who voted for the Democrat in their district's House race ('06 and '10) and who voted for Obama ('08):

Income

2006

2008

2010

$30k-

63%

64%

56%

$30k-$50k

56%

55%

51%

$50k-$75k

50%

48%

46%

$75k-$100k

52%

51%

42%

$100k-$200k

47%

48%

42%

$200k+

45%

52%

35%

More than half of all voters earning more than $200,000 a year supported Obama. A couple of years later, only one-third of high income earners voted Democrat. The country's most affluent swung farther back to the right--a full 17 points--than any other income group--where swings ranged from 2 to 9 points--did between '08 and '10. Either Obama is a uniquely SWPL candidate, or a lot of people didn't know who they were voting for. Everywhere exit polling was conducted and reported at the state level showed that income and voting Republican correlated positively with two exceptions; the uber SWPL state of Oregon, where the trend mostly ran in the opposite direction, and Delaware, where income wasn't much of a factor.

Contingent upon the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, I suspect the latter will prove to be the case, with many high income earners abandoning Obama in his reelection bid. On the brighter side for the left, however, post-graduates who don't make jack shit are still reliably Democratic!

Kudos to the media establishment for preferring the term "independent" to "moderate" when referring to swing voters. Among self-described moderates, Republicans gained a relatively paltry 6 points between '08 and '10 (and still lost them as a group, 42%-55%). Among self-described independents, though, the swing was more than twice that, at 13 points, for a 56%-38% victory. Parenthetically, moderate is a potential answer to the question on political ideology, while independent is a potential response to the question on party identification.

Despite disingenuous admonitions to Republicans about becoming the "party of no" from leftist commentators on NPR and NBC, 56% of the electorate asserted that the government needs to hear a lot more noes than it has been hearing lately ("government is doing too much"). Only 38% said the "government should do more".

Ideally, rather than asking specifically about illegal immigration, exit polls would query voters on immigration in general. The illegal adjective has negative connotations for most people, and consequently when asked to choose the most important issue among a list of several, those who identify illegal immigration as the most pressing are probably more restrictionist than would be the case if the issue in question was regarding immigration policy in general. Or more precisely, those who might choose immigration as their most important issue instead of say, healthcare, still choose healthcare if the immigration choice is limited to one concerning only illegal immigration.

That said, there are plenty of people out there who care about illegal immigration and want to make it easier for those who are illegal to become legal residents, in some cases by merely being present in the US and wanting to live here. And among those who care about illegal immigration the most, Republicans won big, 69%-26%. The pragmatic lesson here for politicians is that (in the general election) restrictionism wins, but it doesn't need to be a centerpiece of their campaigns.

Far from being an unfortunate curmudgeonly exception to the ebullient optimism of the American people, a plurality of voters basically agree with the Derb that we are doomed:

Life for the next generation will be...

Better

32%

Worse

38%

About the same

26%

For those hoping to see pessimism reclaimed, consider an even greater reason to be optimistic! In three seemingly random states that held a Senate and/or gubernatorial election--Colorado, Florida, and Ohio--exit pollsters asked voters whether the economy was in a normal downturn or in long-term decline:

US economy is in...

Colorado

Florida

Ohio

Normal downturn

22%

23%

22%

Long-term decline

72%

73%

77%

Whether you're from the mountain west, the Ohio valley, or the sunshine state, sing it from the rooftops: We are doomed!

Less happily, most Republicans continue to be sunny on the war in Afghanistan. A little over a month ago, Pat Buchanan wrote a column presaging a splitting of the blanket by the tea party wing and war wing of the new GOP. Looks like the latter has the advantage of strength in numbers:

War in Afghanistan

Approve (40%)

Disapprove (54%)

Democrat

23%

77%

Republican

60%

40%

Those opposed to the war are a minority (within the GOP; it's the majority opinion more generally), but at least they are now a substantial one.

In a series of email exchanges I had with the late Richard Nadler, the open borders conservative pointed to John McCain's strong performance among Hispanics in his '04 Senate reelection campaign, in which he won 70% of their votes. But he also won 77% of the white vote, illustrating Steve Sailer's observation that Hispanics tend to vote as whites do, shifted several points to the left.

Six years later, McCain won reelection again. His good fortune was sealed in the primary when he defeated JD Hayworth, but apparently his triumph there did not come without cost. After a decade of being the GOP establishment's front man on amnesty, one nebulous ad about completing "the danged fence" and his Hispanic support vanished* (so goes the media narrative, anyhow). He lost 40%-57% among Hispanics to Rodney Glassman, whose campaign stance on immigration was almost indistinguishable from McCain's.

Yet McCain still sailed to an easy victory because he won the far more important white vote by a wide margin, 64%-29%. It's still one person, one vote after all!

Despite the presumption many have of Christine O'Donnell as a Christian kook, she won among whites in Delaware, 51%-45%. She lost her Senate bid because more than one-fifth of the state's electorate is black, and blacks voted against her 93%-6%, nearly the same rate that blacks voted for Obama in the '08 presidential election. C'mon, don't act surprised. You know how black guys feel about white girls who won't put out!

In most states with large Hispanic populations and a Senate election taking place, exit pollsters asked voters an absurdly dichotomous question about whether most illegal immigrants should be "offered legal status" or "deported". Strangely enough, the question was left out in Florida! Could it be that the majority of those favoring deportation voted for a Hispanic guy and against a white guy? That doesn't fit the narrative and simply must be kept from the public at all costs!

Along with their opposition to federal healthcare mandates, Kentucky offers another reason to find joy in the phrase "the children are our future". Rand Paul pulled off a nearly impossible feat for a Republican in a tight statewide election--he won the 18-24 year old vote, 52%-47%. While I'm a bit wary of how he'll vote on immigration legislation, he embodies my sentiments more than any of the other 99 Senators he'll be sharing the chamber with next year.

Initial exit polling data was reported to show that Sharron Angle had taken a black-like shellacking among Hispanics in Nevada's Senate election. As it turns out, her performance among Hispanics (30%-68%) was in line with Republicans nationwide (34%-64%). It's hardly surprising that given eligibility for affirmative action benefits, low levels of educational attainment, low incomes, high rates of poverty, and high rates of welfare usage, Hispanics are going to find a home in the Democratic party. Very few currently backing Democrats would otherwise be inclined to vote Republican if only the GOP would listen to Bryan Caplan.

Finally, a conundrum from Washington. Patty Murray, the Democrat, won among those aged 45 and older, 54%-46%, but Dino Rossi, the Republican, won among those aged 18-44 by an identical 54%-46%. Hey, I only claimed that Rand Paul's feat was nearly impossible.

* His Arizonan support, anyway. McCain was never able to persuade many Hispanics to back him in '08, even though as I wrote a month before the election, he could not have asked for a more favorable Democratic opponent to be running against as far as garnering the Hispanic vote was concerned:

We have the highest-profile open borders member of the GOP's national leadership, who teamed up with Ted Kennedy in an amnesty attempt that united the public in opposition and who virtually barred restrictionists from the Republican National Convention, running against Obama, who lost the Hispanic vote 64%-36% [to Hillary Clinton, during the Democratic primaries], a margin less favorable than Bush enjoyed among Hispanics in '04. Could you [, Richard Nadler,] ask for a better setup? Yet McCain is getting massacred by Obama among Hispanics. The polls show him losing the Hispanic vote 59%-29%, an Obama advantage that has held steady for several months.